The Consumer Protection Council, Tamil Nadu, has urged the Commissioner of Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection to introduce alternative means of verifying a person’s identity in ration shops as the bio-metric system of taking fingerprints was posing hardship to senior citizens.
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In a resolution adopted at its annual general body meeting, the council said many senior citizens faced difficulties as their fingerprints have faded and could not be read by devices. The council suggested iris scan as an alternative for identity verification.
Through another resolution, the council expressed shock over the death of a woman doctor who drowned in stagnant rainwater in the underpass in Pudukottai district recently. Underpasses getting flooded has become routine and there seems to be no system to pump out rainwater, the council said.
If they were unable to pump out water, the authorities should have at least erected barricades on either side to block the traffic, it was pointed out. The General Manager, Southern Railways, and the Minister should immediately look into this and do what is needed to prevent such accidents in future.
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The council also appealed to Minister for School Education to provide multiple copies of mark sheets for SSLC and Plus Two 2 students and certificates to avoid their original marksheets being held back when a student leaves one institute for another. Some institutions were demanding money to return mark sheets and other certificates, it was said.
The following were unanimously elected office-bearers of the council for the term 2021-2023: president - C. T. Selvakumar; vice-president - S. Sridar; Secretary – S. Pushpavanam; Treasurer - Mohamed Isaque; and Executive Committee members - K. Sekar, P. Gunaseelan, Su. Srinivasan, G. Ravindran, K. Chandrasekaran, V. Kumar Raja, Hussainy Lakshmi Iyer, P. Muthuselvi and Sethumadhavan.